剑桥文学指南
2000-12
上外教育
DONALD PIZER
287
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《剑桥文学指南：美国现实主义和自然主义》是《剑桥文学指南》丛书中的一种，由美国著名学者Donald Pizer教授主编，汇集了11篇视角新颖的评论文章，旨在对美国现实主义和自然主义进行全面的介绍和研究。全书共分三个部分：第一部分为历史背景的研究；第二部分为20世纪70年代以来对该流派的批评方法的研究；第三部分为作品研究，涉及到豪威尔斯、亨利-詹姆斯、马克-吐温、西奥多·德莱塞、厄普敦·辛克莱、杰克·伦敦等10多位作家及其作品。这些研究体现了美国对于这一领域的最新成果。《剑桥文学指南：美国现实主义和自然主义》还附有自1865至1914年的大事年表，按年代记录了这一时期发生的政治、经济及文学上的重大事件，对于我们深入研究美国文学无疑具有很大的价值。
List of ContributorsChronologyIntroduction: The Problem of DefinitionDONALD PIZERPART ONE: HISTORICAL CONTEXTSI The American BackgroundLOUIS J.BUDD2 The European BackgroundRICHARD LEHANPART TWO: CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL ISSUES3 Recent Critical ApproachesMICHAEL ANESKO4 Expanding the Canon of American RealismELIZABETH AMMONSPART THREE: CASE STUDIES5 The Portrait of a Lady and The Rise of Silas Lapbam:The Company They KeptJOHN W. CROWLEY6 The Realism of Adventures of Huckleberry FinnTOM QUIRK7 The Red Badge of Courage and Mc Teague:Passage to ModernityJ. C. LEVENSON8 What More Can Carrie Want? Naturalistic Waysof Consuming WomenBLANCHE H. GELFANTg The Awakening and The House of Mirtb:Plotting Experience and Experiencing PlotBARBARA HOCHMAN10 The Call of the Wdd and The Jungle: Jack London's and Upton Sinclair's Animal and Human JunglesJACQUELINE TAVERNIER-COURBIN11 Troubled Black Humanity in V,e Souls of Black Folk and The Autobiograpby of an Ex-Colored ManKENNETH W. WARRENFurther ReadingIndex
Although he agreed that character had rightly supplanted story in the modern novel， James thought that Howells showed far too little care in framing the picture. In an 1886 essay， written in reaction to “Henry James，Jr.” and the controversy it had incited， James praised Howells‘s “work of observation， of patient and definite notation.” There was no other novelist in English， he thought， whose work was “so exclusively a matter of painting what he sees， and who is so sure of what he sees.” And the object of the novelist’s eye， as Howells insisted in his own criticism， was “the common，the immediate， the familiar and vulgar elements of life.” Howells， said James， “adores the real， the natural， the colloquial， the moderate， the opti-mistic， the domestic， and the democratic; looking askance at exceptions and perversities and superiorities， at surprising and incongruous phenomena in general.”14 For James， Howellsian realism had two major limitations， however. First，although it grasped “a large part of the truth” - the optimistic truth of the American average - it blinked the darker elements: “If American life is on the whole . . . more innocent than that of any other country， nowhere is the fact more patent than in Mr. Howells‘s novels， which exhibit so constant a study of the actual and so small a perception of evil.” Second， Howells’s conviction that “style” mattered litde in the novel led him to hold “compo-sition too cheap” and to allow his work to become artistically unruly. Howells‘s fondness for the dramatic method was， moreover， all too keen: “a critical reader sometimes wishes， not that the dialogue might be suppressed （it is too good for that）， but that it might be distributed， interspaced with narrative and pictorial matter. The author forgets sometimes to paint， to evoke the conditions and appearances， to build in the subject” （“William Dean Howells，” 152一3， 155）. ……
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